My experience with Ubuntu Gutsy

I have been using Ubuntu all the way since October, 07 with a little testing of the other distros every now and then. I must say , I am really pleased with the way things are shaping out. I didn't care much about the desktop environment or the so called window manager, and hence, I stuck around with the default Ubuntu 7.10 package.

I use some KDE applications though, like K3B and Amarok, and I have also replaced firefox with my favourite Opera, might as well try out epiphany someday later.Yes, I love the effects and use both compiz and the emerald manager with the effect that most of my friends are amazed at the sheer looks of it.

Programming and the occasional text edition is usually accomplished with vim, and when I need a GUI I use geany for coding and abiword for text processing. Open Office runs too slow, thereby,  I tend to ignore it whenever I can. Bluefish is good enough for me, for the occasional HTML works.

For watching movies and other videos, I use VLC, mplayer doesn't work for me with all that monstrous subtitle don't size that I couldn't decrease. Have kept it though for the odd ones that needs some adjustment with the subtitle's timers. (VLC really needs to improve here). I also quite like Rythmbox, except that its too simplistic for my music needs. Amarok does bring in some extra KDE libs that I could do without otherwise, but I love it beyond all arguments, so it is there as well. K3B works great, just haven't figured out how to burn files greater than 4GB yet !! I use another useful application,. gcstar, it catalogues movies and books, and I being a movie buff, always find it useful.

All in all I really like my set up of the Gutsy and I doubt that I will take the risk of upgrading to Heron, even though its going to be a LTS.